Took Claire skiing on the 23rd, and you know, I thought it was going to be terribly tedious but I didn’t mind it. It had it’s glitches, but that just added to the panache. The day before I kept calling Tiny Tots ski school to get her an early morning private lesson, but I kept getting their voice mail. I left multiple messages, but nothing.

When we got to 7Springs yesterday morning, the lady at Tiny Tots said she had no availability until 1pm. My response was “My family’s been coming here since 1962. My dad worked here for several years. I learned to ski here 32 years ago and both of my siblings learned here, too. My father would like to get my 3 1/2 year old a private lesson. Now what can we do about this?” The lady’s jaw about fell to the floor.

Needless to say, after she spoke with her supervisor, Claire had a lesson 20 minutes later. Miss Kelsey, her teacher, and I dressed her, and then the Tiny Tot’s ladies told me to leave her backpack and boots. They’d be ok right where they were, they said.

Miss Kelsey did the best she could with Claire, but sometimes Claire doesn’t like to listen. She pulls the same stunt with her swim teacher, Miss Maribel. My dad, brother, and I skiied elsewhere so Claire wouldn’t get distracted. And after an hour I went to pick up Claire at the Tiny Tot’s area. Miss Kelsey gave us her report card and told us her strengths. We took a photo of the two of them, and then Miss Kelsey went off for her next lesson. I began dressing Claire, but then went to grab her boots. No boots. Looked around. Checked in her bag. Checked in my bag. No boots. Asked the lady who didn’t remember the boots. Miss Kelsey was asked. She definitely remember the boots since she took them off Claire to put on her ski boots. Still no boots. Finally the manager gave us a smaller pair of rubber boots someone left, so Claire could go to up to lunch with the three of us (who also needed a break). She said to stop by later and check; in the meantime, they’d keep looking.

I dropped Claire off with Uncle Jaime, and I walked over to the lodge where there’s a Willis Ski Shop. Gina, the clerk, said that they in deed sold children’s boots. I found a nice pair in Claire’s size, and Gina offered to hold them for me.

After lunch we tried to the skiing bit again with Claire, but she didn’t want anything to do with it. I finally got her down the mountain and into the lodge. Jaime was changing her clothes, and I ran down to Tiny Tot’s. They did indeed NOT find her boots. The manager Pam apologized profusely and proceeded to refund me the money from her lesson, so I could go upstairs and get “free” $50.00 EMU boots for my kid. Not a bad Christmas from 7Springs. Ho ho ho.

In a world that is further and further more thrust into the panopticon, we now have a proliferation of speed cameras in and around Phoenix. I hate them. I drive fast. Look, if I am safe and go a little faster than the next guy, then who cares? I get the problems with zooming down the highway and flipping your truck because you’re an idiot, but when you’re driving out along the Mogollon Rim at 65 and come down into Prescott and the speed limit immediately shifts to 45 then it’s not fair. Forget it. This sucked, and it happened to me.

It wouldn’t have been that bad if 1) I didn’t have a ticket a few weeks earlier when Claire was sick and I was rushing to the doctor’s, and 2) if I didn’t already go to traffic school within the last two years. Damn.

Look, I am not unsafe, but if I always obeyed every traffic law then I would be more stressed out. I can’t help if I am running late sometimes because I have an unpredictable 3 year old. Sometimes she’s ready to run out of the house in the morning, and other times she’s like dragging a golem through the process of leaving for school.

I fear our world is going to be and more thrust into the public spotlight, and, of course, there are things that I do willingly to thrust myself there, but I still enjoy certain liberties that are slowly being stripped away.

Flew into Orlando last night. The coolest thing was the fact that we flew through New Orleans, and I immediately scanned the itinerary to see if our layover was long enough to book outta the airport and get to something cool before continuing on to Florida. Problem was our layover turned out to be only 25 minutes. Bummer. Three of us were going to the National Honor Society conference and were scheduled at Doubletree Universal right at Universal Studios. Checking the registration materials, we discovered we weren’t even scheduled to checkin until later on Friday, so we giddily headed down stairs this morning to find tickets to Universal Studios and Island Adventures. Because it’s November and a Friday, we got some sweet deals to both parks. The Universal guy said that since it was only a mile away it’d be quicker to walk, since the shuttle was headed to several other hotels before it would arrive there. Our goal was to be there when they opened and ride as many roller coasters as we could.

Our student secretary had never been on roller coasters, let alone an airplane or out of the southwest. She was freaking out about the roller coasters and we were ready to make her a convert. My friends had been here at Island Adventures just last week for Educause national conference, and they loved The Hulk so we headed there first. Of course there were problems and it wasn’t open. We ran to the next one since the park had just opened. Over the next couple of hours, we hit as many roller coasters as could. Spiderman, Jurassic Park, and several more. Liz was freaking out at first and really didn’t seem to know what she thought. At first she wouldn’t even open her eyes! We walked the park, and went through Dr Seuss land which was really cool. I met Thing 1 & Thing 2 and had my photo taken with The Grinch before we bought a bag or roasted almonds for a snack. By now The Hulk was open so we headed back there. By the time we hit the front of the line the almonds were done.

Liz was freaking out because this thing looked like it twisted and turned, so when we got into our seats I decided to scream on the whole ride Bad idea. Immediately after the ride I felt like I was going to be sick. Liz walked onto the ride freaking out and walked off with fire in her eyes, so excited. She was immediately hooked. Immediately she wanted to get back on, so we did. After the second time, I was in a bad place. There was one roller coaster left, but I had to sit down. Liz and Erica gave me about 37 nanoseconds to rest before dragging me to the Dueling Dragons, which wasn’t as extreme as The Hulk but it was pretty close. It was the last coaster of the park, and our goal was to do them all. Of course, I couldn’t back out. We transversed the line, and I didn’t feel too well. We got up there and the ride rocked! Of course I jumped off the ride and got sick all over the wall. Almonds. Yuck.

After that I felt better, but I realized it was now after 2pm and I hadn’t had a meal. I got a goal to eat at every Bubba Gump in the universe, and guess where one was? Across the park. Liz and Erica had never been there so that was pretty cool. After we ate, I felt better so we headed over to Universal Studios to ride a few more rides over there. I agreed to go even though I wasn’t feeling perfect.

Universal’s great and has a ton of movie things. The Terminator show was really cool, but by now I was totally worn out. We hit a couple other things and then rode The Mummy, which was really fun. By then the park was closing so we took off. Registration was almost closed so it was time to walk a mile back to the hotel.

My father isn’t the most social or warm person in this world, so the times in my youth where he was focused more on his children were those memories that held tight in my mind. Two large parts of this included camping/fishing and skiing. He’s already been dragging Claire off to the slopes for two years now, but we’re not typically anywhere near Pittsburgh in the milder months.

This became my quest. Take Claire camping & fishing. I really miss the GREEN of nature from my youth, so anything to get out of the desert was great for me. We’ve just not gotten around to taking her and when she was younger she was too young.  Her babysitter had been up to Christopher Creek, and the photos she posted online were great. I was ready to go!

Last week we headed north, and we were impressed at how close some of this beautiful nature really was to us. It only took 90 minutes to get to Christopher Creek campground under the Rim. The forest ranger told us it may snow that night, and the temperature would be in the low 40s at best. I’d packed the car, and realized we didn’t really bring coats, hats or gloves. Ooops.

Claire was dressed in an old pair of jeans, Merrell shoes I’d bought her, a Grand Canyon sweatshirt we rummaged from day care, and my Smart Wool cap. She ran around the campsite while we unpacked and put up the tent. I was eager to get to the creek for some fishing, and the ranger didn’t really gave a good idea of where to fish. We decided we’d walk down creek and look for a spot. The four of us (Dante too!) headed down the creek. I had the fishing stuff, and Donna had the kid. Dante was a real good sport about walking over rocks and through water. We found a hole around the creek bend and dropped our lines. Donna took some photos of me teaching Claire how to fish with the new pole I bought her. Donna and Dante sat against some trees so Donna could read while we fished. I enjoyed myself, and Claire was relatively and surprisingly quiet. She didn’t really dig the whole fishing thing because we didn’t catch anything.

At dusk we headed back to cook some hotdogs and marshmallows. Donna made up a fire and we unlocked the food from the truck (bear & elk are common in this area). Claire wasn’t really into the whole idea of Smores, but she liked the marshmallows. After a bit, Claire announced she was ready for bed. Donna took her into the tent, and Claire went right to sleep. Donna beat me in a game of Continental before we headed into the tent ourselves.

When we moved to AZ we bought this perfect little "tent in a bag", which was perfect for two skinnier newlyweds. Now that there are four of us and we’re thicker, this tent was squished! It’s 6′ X 6′, and I quickly realized that I need a new tent. I didn’t sleep well and was up at 6AM. We cooked coffee in a french press and boiled water for oatmeal before deciding to hike down the creek a few miles. We packed up a backpack with jackets, an axe, tons of water, snacks, a compass, etc… and off we walked. I had Dante and Donna had Claire. We found a few people who pointed us towards a scenic walk south along the creek. The weather was beautiful even if they now called for rain, and after about 2 1/2 miles we climbed onto a huge rock to have a nice lunch.

One thing that was a bit of an event was that Claire would not go to the bathroom in "the hole" (outhouse), so we were a little concerned she wouldn’t "go" until we got home in the next day. After modeling what she needed to do, she finally went! It was really funny, but after that first time, for the rest of the trip she’d just drop trou wherever she was! Later on a trail, near a road, she just began pulling down her pants to pee!

After our nice lunch, we walked back up the creek, grabbed our gear and drove out toward the general store. The cashier pointed us up the Rim to Woods Canyon Lake, and she said they’d stocked the lake with trout. As we rolled up to the lake, the clouds rolled in. I tried to get Claire to fish some more, but she wanted nothing to do with it. Donna, on the other hand, saw some crayfish (the call ‘em crawdads here!) in the lake. She grabbed the net and began catching crayfish, which she wanted me to use to fish. We didn’t really catch anything and eventually it began to pour. My rain coat was in the tent back at camp, but I wanted to catch my kid a fish so I stood there fishing in the rain while my women waited under a pine tree.

We were all wet, and I didn’t bring Claire clean socks or panties! The nice woman in the store found Claire some socks in the back, and we bought some dry wood. Back at camp the rain had dissipated somewhat, so we began dinner while I dressed me and Claire in our rain suits. I mostly put my rain pants on so I could sit down! We threw some corn in the fire, roasted some dogs and sat soaking went and happy for a few hours. We were soaking wet, and that night the tent felt wetter than ever.

The next morning Donna was up packing at 6AM, and we were off to Phoenix at 7AM to get home in time for Claire’s first bowling league. 

In June my family & I took Claire to Disneyworld in Orlando, FL. My sister had her Sony camera with her that my father gave her. After clicking the first photo of Claire with some random person dressed up like some random Disney character, Meghan dropped the camera to the asphalt. It immediately jammed and would not zoom. I understood the problem and explained to her that she was out of luck. Meghan was annoyed that her camera was destroyed, but I explained that we all had cameras and she’d still get photos. I also told her that I would send it away to fix it. I’d sent two other cameras in for repair over the years, and I had an idea how get the company to fix a digital camera.  She finally agreed.

I took the camera home and quickly forgot I had it for about a month. I then remembered it was there, called Sony, got a repair code, and mailed it in. At the time I was buying somethings online, so lots of stuff was coming in and going out. Consequentially, I forgot all about Meghan’s little Sony digital camera.

About five weeks later I was tucking Claire into bed and suddenly remembered the camera. I went out and asked Donna if she’d seen a box from Sony. Something sent back to us from the Laredo, TX repair center? She said she hadn’t. I was pretty worried about the $300+ camera, and I knew that Sony ships via UPS. Wanna know what I think of UPS? I can only say the company’s color is not a coincidence! The checked GMAIL and found an email from a month earlier from Sony saying it was being sent back. I get 100+ emails daily, so I just must’ve missed this one. I put the tracking number into the UPS site and it said it was delivered several weeks ago.  I went to bed that night unhappy and worried. I wanted to call Sony immediately but it was late. The next day I called UPS and they weren’t any help. They said it was Sony’s fault not there’s. This made no sense since Sony said they sent it, and they had a tracking number. UPS told me that Sony had to initiate any lost package claim. So I called Sony. Sony said they had no idea what I was talking about, and if it was anyone’s fault then it was the Laredo, TX repair center’s fault. The lady put me on hold and tried to call them. She quickly came back and told me they weren’t answering and I’d have to call them myself. I don’t even think she had time to dial a number in Texas.

I quickly thanked her, scribbled down the number, and thought about how I would nail them on the customer service survey. I didn’t care to talk to anymore Sony idiots today, so I shoved the number in my pocket and went about my job. Later that day, I pulled into our driveway and walked around the front sidewalk. I pushed back the edge of our bush next to the front door. Low and behold, a tattered, moist, dirty UPS box sat under the bush near the door. Oops.

My inlaws ended up in Arizona in the hottest part of the year, but for some reason it was unseasonably muggy while they were here. Although the monsoons arrived as soon as they left in the beginning of July, I needed to get the heck out of the valley. I emailed our friends who have a cabin up in Payson, AZ and asked them to rescue us from this abysmal hell of the Sonoran Desert. A day later I got a call that they’d be at the cabin for a week and we were more than welcome to drive up for a couple of days. Donna was amenable to this, so last Saturday we threw our stuff in the car, dropped the extra key with the neighbor to watch the dog, and drove north. Payson is really only a 90 minute drive from our house, and they’ve worked on bettering the Beeline Highway which is a direct shot from here to there. On the road, I texted a friend who loves to ride her hog up and down this highway on weekends and asked what we should see while there. She suggested I dragged the fam to the Tonto Natural Bridge; I’ve never heard of it, so I mentioned it to Donna and filed it away.

We decided to just drive up over night. Claire for two days beforehand wouldn’t stop talking about seeing her friend Eli. Eli’s going to be 5 this August, and so he’s about 1 1/2 years older than her. They’re good friends, and at home, his parents are like our SW family. The weather is the pines was a mild low 70s and the beers were ice cold. Loved it. Good company and drinks. We sat around, snacking, and talking. Those two played and played. Eli’s little sister Riely just stood in her saucer toy and frowned (her favorite thing to do at 13 months old).

That night we had a huge storm. We sat inside playing games and watching it rain. Claire and Eli were relegated to the second floor where there’s a television with kid’s movies. They eventually fell asleep and were put to bed, and we played Sequence and Facts in Five until the wee hours.

I had asked Terri if the Bridge was cool, and she said it was nearby and worth seeing, so we headed up there the next morning after saying our goodbyes and shooting a cool video of Claire & Eli hugging goodbye.

Tonto Natural Bridge is an ancient geological creation that essentially eroded through several layers of various rocks until there’s a natural bridge that’s just under 200 feet tall. Terri said which trails to take and what would be easier to do with Claire. When we got there, we were confused. We hit one trail and saw some cool waterfall, but we wanted the Big Kahuna. We took another trail down and it looked a little steep. Donna had her purse shoved in a bag with some snacks and water. I wasn’t carrying much because I still had sutures in my chest. Claire’s new Merrel hiking boots got a work out as we made our way down the side of what amounted to a cliff. We came around a bend, and down the creek bed was the bridge. We made our way as carefully as possible down to the bridge and under it. Up ahead we saw what looked like ants, but were people down where we were headed. I felt like a pack mule going down the Canyon.

We made our way over rocks, slippery with wear. We slipped into Pine Creek water and had a helluva good time. We made it down to the bottom, and a beautiful waterfall fell down under the bridge. We had a short snack, shot some more video and pics, and walked back up the easy way. The way I bet Terri had suggested we walk down.

After our adventure, we headed back down to Payson and tried to beat the storm down to the valley. We lost that battle and drove precariously down the Beeline in the torrential downpours with everyone else who had the same ideas as us. About 30 miles north of Fountain Hills all traffic stopped. Someone had rolled a pickup into the ditch. The truck blew up, and when we finally made it the two miles to where the truck lay (after 90 minutes of waiting!) the rubber of the tires had completely melted off.

Even though the driver had a terrible weekend, we enjoyed our time with our friends and our adventure hiking with 14 stitches, a three year old, and two cameras.

Donna, Claire and I went to Angelika & Terri’s cabin in Payson this weekend. Eli, their 4 1/2 year old, who adores my daughter was so excited to have a sleep over. We enjoyed our visit immensely, and I will write at length later, but I wanted to share the video I shot of them saying good bye when we left today.

My sister moved to Colorado several years ago to go to the University of Colorado for psychology. I had originally hoped she’d head west but further south. Problem was ASU didn’t want her, but CU snatched her up. Not really sure all what happened there , but she lasted in the program for about a year. Hey, it was a cool place to visit. Somewhere along the line, she met Jonathan, who is actually older than I am by a couple years. Upon meeting Jon, age didn’t matter at all for my little sister. Jonathan rocks. Meghan proceeded to drop out of school and move in with Jonathan. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not too much of a slacker. She continued working (has a work ethic somewhere between mine and Jaime’s) and enjoyed the mountain life, but she always missed Pittsburgh.

Jonathan is from Florida, and his mother lives in Fort Lauderdale. Other than Meghan, he had no links to Pittsburgh. Donna and I’ve been away for almost a decade now, but no matter what I told her she didn’t understand that she had to go back. Eventually, through time and love, she convinced Jonathan to move to Pittsburgh.

There wasn’t much left for them in Colorado, so they decided to head east. Jonathan is very handy and can work in several places, but Meghan really wanted to complete her nursing degree. She’s always been good at trying to read people, seemingly care for people, and following in her mother’s footsteps sounded like a pretty good idea. Shadyside Nursing Academy is a pretty good place to get started, so she and Jonathan packed up their belongings and had them shipped to PA. The problem was though that Jonathan’s dog Jasper is about a billion years old, so they couldn’t fly with Jasper and Meghan’s two cats, so they rented a car.

They were suppose to leave last Monday, but they’d grossly underestimated their belongings. They didn’t leave until late on the third, but Jonathan’s mother had already bought Meghan and Jonathan plane tickets from Pittsburgh to Florida for a family party. The tickets had them flying out on July 5th in the morning. Needless to say they were relatively stressed and I  still don’t know how they made it across the USA without killing each other. At midnight on July 5th, they had arrived in Pittsburgh, dropped off Meghan’s twin black cats, and Jasper the geriatric dog. Before Jonathan and Meghan (who at this point hadn’t slept for about 36 hours) left for the airport after staying up half the night talking to my mother, Jonathan turned to my mother.

"If Jasper dies while we’re gone, please cremate him."

My mother cocked her head, "Whadda ya mean? Light his tail on fire?"

Still here in Seattle another day. When I go to a new city (or one where I’ve not been for sometime) I like to go into the city. Well, Bellevue is about 30 minutes outside of downtown Seattle, but I was still sort of interested in going. We had planned on going into town on Wednesday, but that fell through so I was relatively adamant about going last night. We headed out right away, and there were 8 of us, as four of our Science friends joined us, including Vinni’s mommy.

Our plan was to go to the Underground Seattle Tour, then to Starbuck’s and end at the Space Needle. So we were heading from Pioneer Square to the Needle and then home. I agreed to go, but I also said I didn’t want to be out too late. They all assured me we’d be back soon. The public bus was only $2.50 to go downtown. It was one of those accordion buses so I sat in the middle part with a friend who almost got sick from sitting there.

After about 45 minutes we got downtown through Chinatown and headed over the the tour. We paid our $15.00 and had half an hour to grab a beer before our tour. The tour guide was ok. There were a few drunk guys at the beginning of the tour and too many small kids. He was annoyed, but then when we walked out into the square someone had obviously encouraged those two groups to not follow us. The tour was cool, and he talked about how Seattle was once about 10 feet lower before it burned to the ground.

Erica wanted to make sure we got to Starbuck’s so we headed down toward the water to walk along Alaskan Way and past the hotel where the Beatles once stayed. Walking along the water reminded of taking trips with students because I always had a few stragglers, and you could tell the faster walkers were getting annoyed. Even though we knew when Starbuck’s closed, the group still felt like they needed to eat first. We grabbed some fast friend seafood. We all wanted chowder bread bowls, and I let Erica go first. She got her chowder, and when it was my turn, the guy was out of bread! Damnit. I did end up with some salmon, which was wonderful, but I really did want to have the chowder.

From here I had a good idea I could find Starbuck’s since I was here last year, so we headed down the Way and then I saw the stairs. I knew Pike Place Market was up, up, up. The other seven people thought I was crazy, as I hoofed it up the stairs. I passed a thai restaurant where I ate with the Carvers last summer, then I climbed the hill with the group trying to keep up. I wasn’t stopping until I got to the coffee shop. I knew the Market would be closed, but it wasn’t even 9pm so Starbuck’s was open. We got there. It was just like I remembered it, but there were less people. We got our drinks, took our pictures, and bought our souvenirs. Last year they had more kid stuff, so I didn’t buy anything for Claire this time.

We came out of there about 9:30 pm, and by this time my feet were killin’ me. I would’ve loved to just head back, but Erica and the group still wanted to hit the Needle. I knew a few of us didn’t really care to keep going, but we headed up the hill. A few of us decided not to go up the Needle, and I just wanted to get my kid a t-shirt. We hung out in the gift shop while part of group headed up, and after awhile they came hobbling out of the elevator after the drop from 520 feet above Seattle.

By now it was after 10 pm, and I was ready to fall asleep. I’d typically been in bed by 10 recently, and I was miles from my bed! Kate asked the valet how to get to the bus, and Erica asked someone else. They both headed off in different directions. Ugh. I could quickly tell that they were both headstrong (which I’d know about one of them), and we followed on who was then lost. We were going to follow the other, but I dragged them into a gas station to get directions.

My legs burned. We were tired. It was late. My eyes watered. We caught a bus to our other bus. We got off the bus. We walked up a hill, complained, a little crankier. We got lost and then found our stop. Quickly we boarded our bus and I slept all the way to Bellevue. I was in bed by 12:30AM. Yawn.